The MV Maersk Alabama is a cargo ship on east African routes. It has been subject to several attempted pirate attacks and hijackings, most notably in April 2009, when Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage.

People

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Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks, in a terrific performance) is driven to the airport by his wife (Catherine Keener) for his next job. He is to captain the Maersk Alabama from Oman to Mombasa – right through the pirate-infested Somali basin. They have a banal conversation in the car about how the world has changed in recent years, but don't be put off: this is the only flabby moment in Billy Ray's otherwise taut screenplay. Meanwhile, on the coast of Somalia, armed ganglords chivvy the locals into a piracy expedition. It's a tantalising glimpse into the lousy choices available to ordinary people in a wartorn, painfully impoverished land, though the film wafts its attention only fleetingly at the Somalis' background. If they don't go on the pirate ships, it is implied, they will face the wrath of the ganglords as well as the abject deprivation and hopelessness that is their lot. The movie is sustained by a brilliant amateur cast, chosen by Greengrass from Somali immigrants in Minneapolis. Each of the four hijackers is compelling to watch, though Barkhad Abdi, as their leader Abduwali Muse, is exceptional.

Age

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The film makes a big deal of one pirate being very young, perhaps only 16. According to Robert Gates, who was US defence secretary at the time, all of the pirates were between 17 and 19 years old, though later reports suggested some were in their 20s or 30s. Muse's mother argued that her son was only 16, but a US court declared him to be 18 and therefore capable of facing trial as an adult. Barkhad Abdi is 28, so his casting underlines the claim that he was not a minor and subtly strengthens the American case.

Heroism

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Captain Phillips himself is not a classic Hollywood action hero. In fact, he spends a lot of the film being terrified, which is understandable. Even so, at least one anonymous former crew member has publicly criticised the film's view that Phillips was meticulous, sensible and profoundly concerned with the safety of his men, and others have cast doubt on a key moment of Phillips's self-sacrifice. Eleven crew members are bringing a lawsuit against Maersk Line and the Waterman Steamship Corporation, and it will be difficult for historians to pick through what actually happened until that is resolved. For now, all that can be said is that what you see on screen isn't the only version of the story.

Politics

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The pirates bundle Phillips into a lifeboat and make for Somalia, hoping to exchange him for a $10m ransom. At this point, the film's real hero heaves into view: the massive, stony-faced and overwhelmingly powerful US navy. Paul Greengrass has a habit of directing historical films in a highly effective, tense documentary style while making striking, though disparate, political points. In Green Zone, he angered the American right by attacking the case for WMDs in Iraq. In United 93, he appeased it with an all-out display of US heroism.

The point of Captain Phillips appears to be that the US navy is awesome. Handsome sharpshooting marksmen track the pirates through the windows of their lifeboat. Hi-tech spies put names to all their faces, using whatever mega-efficient identity database of everyone in the entire world hi-tech spies are presumed to hold. Frogmen leap out of planes in their flippers, drifting stealthily towards the lifeboat on parachutes. You might be expecting the film to make more of how extraordinary it is that this mighty war machine is pitted against four desperate, clueless, straggly young lads. It doesn't. The tiny flicker of understanding for Muse's predicament that sparked at the beginning sparks no more. But the US navy is awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Got that? Awesome.